Here are a few excerpts from a hundred-year-old article about vitamins and colds.
Have vitamins anything to do with one’s immunity to colds? Through some years of watching the needs of a family, in dietetics, and in nursing, I have concluded that they have.
In the days when the real necessity for raw foods was unknown, when fruits were cooked for winter serving and we used canned vegetables, colds were very common. The longing for spring and fresh things was almost irresistible. The one really well person in the house was great grandma who never left her chair, ate only what she liked, but who always had her morning orange, her cream, and fresh laid eggs. We went through many dense years, fighting through the winter, to spring.
When the children went to college, a wonderful inspiration made me insist that, while there, they ate freely of apples and oranges, to break up the concentrated diet. Soon, the young people joined Grandma in the ranks of those who took few colds.
The children have graduated, but they stick to their love for fresh fruits and salads, and quickly throw off contagion.
Abridged from American Cookery (March, 1922)
How smart this person was so long ago. Many people now should read this opinion.
I liked how the author used her personal experiences to explain the relationship between colds and vitamins.
The city mouse beginning to realize the country mouse was better off.
I like your analogy.
It seems we are back around to eating fresh.
I agree that we are back to eating fresh. I was a little surprised when I read the article in the hundred-year-old magazine how few fresh foods many people apparently ate a hundred years ago.
Love that this mother used her powers of observation and learned by experience what to feed her family!
I also liked how she used her personal experiences. They can serve as a good basis for many decisions.
Keen observation skills! And her assumptions have now been confirmed with science!! Doesn’t surprise me as “domestic engineers” were so very in tune with their families!
Now that you mention it, this article was a nice example of how women a hundred years ago merged their personal experiences with what the experts said. Many women took their role as domestic engineer very seriously, Though it seems old-fashioned today, at the time, the idea that women could manage their households just as efficiently and scientifically as a man managed a business was considered very forward thinking.
Thanks. There’s truth here.
It’s nice to hear that you enjoyed this post.
The old wise saying.. an apple a day keeps the doctor away…. Maybe this author started that saying.😄
Maybe . . . It’s a good saying. I know that almost everytime I eat an apple, I think of that old saying.
Winter IS cold and flu season, because people are spreading germs in close quarters, and low humidity dries out mucus membranes–a first defense against respiratory pathogens. Fresh produce loses vitamins by the hour through enzymatic breakdown and oxidation, so canned fruits and vegetables are often more nutritious because the degradation is slowed.